Preyme -

Because everyone’s a lamb, he thought. Instead, he forced a smile. “Just wait a week. I’ve got a surprise.”

His younger sister, Mira, was only seventeen—still preyme, still full of wild laughter and terrible drawings of flying whales. She didn’t know what the Reclamation meant. The Corporation had scrubbed that from school curricula. To her, turning twenty-five was just a boring medical checkup. preyme

But the virus needed a carrier: a living neural stream to smuggle it past the firewalls. Kael volunteered. Because everyone’s a lamb, he thought

Kael collapsed onto the cold floor, gasping. His mind was full of holes. He couldn’t remember his mother’s name. But he remembered why he’d come. Because everyone’s a lamb